Markets 
Weather 
A Perth court has been played covert recordings between an accused murderer and his son, who probed for answers as to what happened when his mother went missing decades earlier.
Raymond Reddington – previously known as Robert Fulton and Maxwell Fulton – has been charged with the murder of his then 39-year-old wife Sharon Fulton in 1986.
Cold case detectives re-opened the case into her disappearance following a Coroner’s Court verdict that she likely met with foul play.
Sharon Fulton’s body has never been found, and her disappearance has been the subject of two police investigations – one in 2007 and another in 2017 – as well as the coroner’s inquest in 2022.
Despite extensive inquiries by police and family and comprehensive media coverage, there has been no information regarding her whereabouts since her disappearance.
Prior to Thursday’s hearing, jurors requested a transcript of a covert recorded conversation between Reddington and his son, Heath Fulton.
Due to technical issues, no transcript was available and the prosecution and defence agreed to proceed with the recording being played in the Supreme Court on Thursday.
A transcript will be made available for the jurors to read while making their deliberations in addition to the recordings.
Defence lawyer Jonathan Davies also suggested the use of technology to “clean up” the recording to make it easier to understand.
The first conversation between the accused and his son took place on June 16, 2017.
However, due to background noise and the kind of recording device used, the dialogue between the pair was difficult to accurately be understood.
At one stage, Fulton was heard asking his father if Sharon had killed herself, adding that he only wanted closure after his mother’s disappearance.
“Why would she leave her kids? Why would she leave you?” Fulton was heard asking his father on the recording.
“If there wasn’t an issue then why would she do that?”
Reddington can allegedly be heard replying, “I do believe something happened to her”, before the recording again becomes unclear.
The court was the played a second covert recording of a conversation 16 days later on August 2, in which Reddington and his son were heard discussing several everyday topics in a Gold Coast apartment.
The discussion then switched to Fulton’s interest in what happened to his mother.
“The thing that upset me the other night was I don’t like being called a liar,” Reddington can be heard saying.
“Anybody else [asking that] and I probably would have thrown them over the balcony.”
Fulton could be heard asking his father what exactly happened on the day his mother went missing.
“All I remember is going to the daycare centre, heading to the train station and then coming home from the train station,” Reddington replied in the recording.
“Why was I going to daycare if mum wasn’t working?” Fulton asked.
“Why were you picking me up instead of mum?
“Was there an argument in the morning?”
“No there was an argument the night before,” Reddington replied in the recording.
The conversation then moves to a nearby restaurant, where background noise again makes the dialogue difficult to clearly understand.
The trial began on Wednesday, with prosecutor Ben Stanwix telling the jury a series of lies allegedly made by Reddington – including a falsified letter to the WA coroner – would be proven by the state over the coming three weeks.
However, Davies, in his opening address, told there jury there was “no body, no confession, no proof”.
“The prosecution has put forward a story of a husband, a troubled marriage, and a murder, but the law doesn’t convict on stories, it convicts on proof and in this case, it is only circumstance,” he said.
More to come.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.
From our partners
Read the full article here
